SIM free phone shop Handtec has prematurely revealed that the Optimus Vu will cost £359.99 when released in the UK, cheaper than its similarly sized Samsung Galaxy Note rival.

There's no word on the handset's release date yet, and LG was unable to announce that at the time of writing.

The LG Optimus Vu was first unveiled way back in February, and aims to take on the 'phablet' market with its huge 5in 769x1024 touchscreen with a quirky 4:3 aspect ratio display. LG has updated the handset's internals since its announcement at MWC, upgrading it to an Nvidia 1.4GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor and Google's newer Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system.

There's also an 8MP rear-facing camera with HD 1080p video, a 1.3MP front-facing camera for video calling, 32GB of internal storage and a 2080mAh battery.

The LG Optimus Vu has yet to be adopted by any networks in the UK, so it's unclear if it will be available here in Blighty on pay monthly tariffs. µ